We’ve heard that listening to Mozart can make your baby smarter, but there has been little research to back up these claims. Until now.

A study out of Northwestern University has linked music to improved language, speech, memory, attention and vocal emotion. Why? Learning music can enhance the brain’s ability to adapt and change. Also, neural connections made during musical training prime the brain for all other aspects of human communication. The study went so far as to say that the benefits of music on your brain are equivelent to the benefits of exercise on your body.

But if you want your child to have the true benefits of music, you’ll have to go beyond listening to a Raffi sing-a-long. To get the full benefits of music you need to encourage your child to sing and play an instrument of their own.

Simply put, children who are muscially trained are better at observing pitch changes in speech and have a better vocabulary and reading ability than children who did not receive music training.

Tags: baby, benefits of music, brain, child, improved language, memory, mozart, music, smarter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 9:32 am and is filed under Nancy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.